


or is it always in the blood

by mayerwien



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Drabble, Episode: s06e02 Razor's Edge, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 13:30:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15001892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/pseuds/mayerwien
Summary: Moms were something all the other kids at school had; not Keith.





	or is it always in the blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strikinglight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/gifts).



> Missing scene from "Razor's Edge." Title is from "In the Blood" by John Mayer which, ouch.
> 
> This is a thank-you drabble for Meg, my own mother--who saves my life, again and again and always. :') Kindest regards and deepest respect, Maman! May your fields of buckwheat flourish evermore. (P.S. i named the sparklewolf as a wink to you ahaha)

_Mom_ is a word, Keith thinks as he looks across the fire at Krolia, that has pretty much never been in his vocabulary. A concept just completely not part of his _world._ Moms were something all the other kids at school had; not Keith. And it was fine, really—he’s always thought that you can’t miss what you never had.

Even so, growing up, Keith came to understand leaving, too. That sometimes you don’t get to choose when you leave. How sometimes your leaving is for the greater good.

The haze rising from the fire makes Krolia’s shape waver, and Keith blinks.

_I left to protect the person I most love._

“Are you cold?” Krolia asks, her voice low. She rolls her shoulders and stretches her arms up to the cave ceiling. It’s night now, and raining; the unpredictable change in seasons as they move through the quantum realm means the weather shifts and the days grow shorter and longer without warning.

“I’m fine,” Keith says automatically, and reaches over to scratch behind the ears of the wolf-creature. Her nose twitches, and she whuffs before curling up closer to his side. Keith named her Cooper, after the dog they had when he was little, and before Krolia pointed out that she was a _female_ wolf-creature—but the name’s stuck.

Krolia sighs, gets up, and circles the fire to him. Taking the emergency blanket off her own shoulders, she drapes it securely over Keith. “You can never just _admit_ anything, can you?” she says. “I could see you shivering from across the room.”

Keith lowers his eyes to the cave floor. “Thanks,” he mumbles awkwardly, adjusting the blanket so one corner of it is covering Cooper.

He thinks Krolia’s going to go back to sit over there, but instead she lowers herself to the ground and kneels next to him. Keith turns his head to look at her, and she lifts her hand hesitantly before resting it on his shoulder, her fingers squeezing through the scratchy fabric of the blanket. And Keith freezes, because in the brief, confusing time they’ve known each other Krolia has never touched him like this—not out of mere necessity or to pull him out of the path of some danger, but just to acknowledge that he’s there. Like some kind of reminder, both for him, and for herself.

Then to Keith’s complete surprise, Krolia puts her other hand to his cheek, cupping his face, before pulling his head down slightly and leaning in to bury her nose in his hair. He can feel her breathing in, slowly, while Keith doesn’t think he’s breathing at all.

When Krolia finally lets go of him and leans back on her haunches, she asks, “You know how they say a mother always recognizes the smell of her child?”

“I—I thought that was just an Earth thing.” There’s a lump in Keith’s throat, that he has to get the words around.

“Oh, no.” Krolia smiles faintly. “We have a word for it in Galran. _Nak-moyen._ Literally, it means _blood-scent_ —blood as in family.” She gets up then and crosses to the woodpile, picking up another log to toss onto the fire.

 _What do I smell like to you?_ Keith thinks, with a strange, quiet desperation he’s never known before. There are so many questions he has for her. _What do you see when you look at me? Am I anything like you thought I would be?_

But Keith doesn’t know how to ask any of that. So what he asks instead is, “How long do we have, do you think?”

“Till we come out the other side?” Krolia glances outside the mouth of the cave, where the rain is still streaming down and creating soft pools in the grass. “There’s no way of telling, I’m afraid. All we can do is wait.”

“At least we have—“ Keith falters.

Krolia looks back at him. “What?” she asks.

“Just—time.” Keith looks away, embarrassed. “At least we have some time.”

It’s silent for a moment, and then Krolia murmurs, “It’s late. You should get some rest.”

“Yeah.” Keith shifts and moves the blanket so he can lie down next to Cooper. “Yeah, you too.”

“I will,” Krolia says. He can hear her footsteps moving across the cave floor, soft and catlike. He hardly used to hear them at first, she’s that silent; but he’s learned to listen for them now, for when she’s not in his line of sight. “Good night, Keith.”

“Good night, Krolia,” Keith says. And as he drifts off to sleep in front of the fire, he thinks about how funny it is—that even though he’s traveled across entire galaxies, it’s still possible, somehow, for his world to have expanded a little wider.

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe "keith's wolf" has its own tag now


End file.
